Read Online Disposition of Remains by Laura T. Emery - Free Book Online Page B

the driveway. It only took seconds for Evan to burst out of his car and come barreling toward him. We used the time that Evan was distracted to jump into Wilbur’s car, which was parked less than twenty feet away. Misty sat in the front and I ducked down in the back like a fugitive from the law as we did a slow drive-by to make sure neither Paul nor Evan was throttling the other. Once we determined that they were engaged in what appeared to be a civilized chat, we sped away. I prayed that Evan would just relent and leave before persuading Paul to tell him about any of my adventures over those last few days. Luckily, I had left Paul with plausible deniability regarding my intended destination, mainly because I had no freaking idea myself.
    Evan was never violent, not really—although he hated being walked away from. He’d grabbed my arm a couple of times in the past when I’d tried to walk away out of sheer frustration with his all-talk-and-no-listen mode of communication. Most of the time, our arguments couldn’t even be classified as exchanges of grievances. They were more along the lines of high-volume lectures directed at me. Evan’s laundry list of red-flag behaviors, criticisms, and “helpful hints” was ever growing. He had an insatiable appetite for trying to mold me into his version of the perfect wife. I’d been forced to come to terms with the fact that this was a goal that could never be achieved because Evan kept moving the goalpost. I hadn’t ascertained whether this was because he was a masochist, secretly scheming against his own ability to be happy with anything or anyone, or a sadist intent on keeping me as unhappy as possible. It didn’t matter much which motive drove him because both results had become our de facto reality; the two of us were irreconcilably miserable with each other. Why did it have to take a tumor for me to realize that simple truth?
    The fact remained that even though I had no further use for Evan, it was never my goal to see him hurt. I hoped his encounter with Paul wouldn’t become one of those moments that would put him over the edge. He was generally quite charming with strangers. In fact, everybody loved him—everyone who wasn’t married to him, that is. However, confronting a man that was in possession of his wife’s cell phone—and possibly his wife —was likely to make him less than charming. The implications of my missing phone would be clear to him, even if they were patently untrue. I started to worry.
    “Maybe we should go back. I don’t want to leave Paul to have to deal with him,” I finally managed.
    “Don’t worry, darling; Paul’s got a black belt in Tai Chi,” Misty chuckled.
    Wilbur laughed along with her, but I didn’t see the humor in the situation. One glimpse of Evan, and all the good that the last few days had done me vanished into a blur of anxiety. At least he had served the purpose of catapulting me into the realization that I wasn’t ready to go back, and never would be.
    We arrived at the Quick Fix Garage to retrieve Misty’s Bug just as they were opening.
    “There’s Old Reliable,” Misty purred as she pointed to her little beater in the garage bay.
    Misty jumped out of the car even before Wilbur had come to a complete stop. She gleefully rushed over to talk to the mechanic, leaving Wilbur and me alone in the car. I glanced at him awkwardly, embarrassed by my seemingly odd avoidance of Evan.
    “I’m officially never getting married,” Wilbur laughed.
    I reddened, but I couldn’t blame him.
    “I don’t think that my situation with Evan is the example you should be using to make any sort of judgment about marriage.”
    Wilbur was about to refute my statement when Misty plopped back into his car.
    “O kay, on to plan B. Car won’t be ready for a couple more days; she needs major fixing. It’s more than the head gasket—Old Reliable needs a rebuilt engine.”
    “Oh, bummer. What’s plan B?” I inquired.
    “I was hoping